Sex stereotypes and social judgment.

Abstract

Sex stereotype assessment studies demonstrate that certain personality traits, such as assertiveness, are believed to occur more often among men, whereas other traits, such as passivity, are believed to occur more often among women. These stereotypic beliefs have been widely assumed to affect judgments of individuals. Surprisingly, an experiment conducted to test this assumption obtained no evidence for effects of sex stereotypes on subjects' judgments about a target individual. Instead, subjects' judgments were strongly influenced by behavioral information about the target. To explain these results, it is noted that the predicted effects of social stereotypes on judgments of individuals conform to Bayes' theorem for the normative use of prior probabilities in judgment tasks, inasmuch as stereotypic beliefs may be regarded as intuitive estimates for the probabilities of traits in social groups. Research in the psychology of prediction has demonstrated that people often neglect prior probabilities when making predictions about individuals, especially when they have individuating information about the person that is subjectively diagnostic of the criterion. An important implication of this research is that a minimal amount of subjectively diagnostic target case information should be sufficient to eradicate effects of stereotypes on judgments about individuals. A second experiment conducted to test this hypothesis supported the argument.Sex stereotypes have been measured off and significantly different mean ratings have been on for over 20 years, and the results have been conceptually similar across time and across quite consistent. Different studies of sex studies. In essence, the typical man is described stereotypes have all used a similar assessment as more assertive, active, objective, rational, format. In general, subjects have been pre-and competent than the typical woman; the sented with a list of personality traits and typical woman is described as more passive, asked to rate the extent to which each attri-emotional, submissive, compassionate, and bute is characteristic of the typical man and socially sensitive (Bern, 1974; Broverman, the typical woman. The attributes receiving Vogel,

When Does Race Matter? Exploring White Responses to Minority Congressional Candidates

“…The psychological basis for these two contexts lies in an "assumed-characteristics" interpretation of candidate qualities, in which information about a particular person's characteristics or beliefs can either serve to confirm or override prior biases (Locksley et al, 1980). The strength of candidate partisanship has been found to override policy positions and candidate information that contradicts normally held partisan stereotypes (Rahn, 1993).…”

Applicant and Method Factors Related to Ethnic Score Differences in Personnel Selection: A Study at the Dutch Police

“…In other words, this theory supposes that the new ethnicity-related demographic information of the applicant is more positive than the assumed characteristics on the basis of ethnicity. When in-group members have relevant ethnicity-related demographic information about out-group members (e.g., information about someone's education and language-proficiency) this information should diminish the negative group membership effects on the basis of ethnicity (Jussim, 1990(Jussim, , 1991(Jussim, , 1993Locksley et al, 1980;Rokeach & Mezel, 1966; for a review see Swim, Borgida, Maruyama, & Myers, 1989). Assumed-characteristics theory would lead to the following expectations: Even if some factors, such as the knowledge of someone's ethnicity, lead to an evaluation in favor of individuals belonging to one group, other relevant ethnicity-related demographic informationinformation other than someone's ethnicity, for example, someone's education or language-proficiency-should be more influential than group membership on the basis of ethnicity (Coleman et al, 1995;Jussim et al, 1987Jussim et al, , 1996.…”

“…Two theoretical perspectives that address the influence of demographic information of individuals on evaluations by others are so-called assumed-characteristics theory (Locksley et al, 1980;Locksley et al, 1982aLocksley et al, , 1982b) and complexity-extremity theory (Linville, 1982;Linville & Jones, 1980). Coleman, Jussim, and Kelley (1995) ;Jussim, Coleman, and Lerch (1987);and Jussim, Fleming, Coleman, and Kohberger (1996) have investigated assumed-characteristics theory and complexity-extremity theory in laboratory experiments.…”

“…These perspectives concern the impact of perceptions of groups on evaluators' ratings, defined according to the ethnicity-related demographic characteristics of these groups. These are assumed-characteristics theory (Locksley, Borgida, Brekke, & Hepburn, 1980;Locksley, Hepburn, & Ortiz, 1982a, 1982b and complexity-extremity theory (Linville, 1982;Linville & Jones, 1980). Hypotheses will then be derived and tested in the context of the Dutch police officer selection procedure over the last couple of years.…”

With malice toward none and charity for some: Ingroup favoritism enables discrimination.

“…Learning about a person's distinctive characteristics-"individuating" that person-is widely understood as a means of overcoming the disadvantaging effects of stereotypes (Fiske & Neuberg, 1990;Kunda & Thagard, 1996;Locksley, Borgida, Brekke, & Hepburn, 1980). An unfamiliar person whose distinctive characteristics are unknown may be judged, unthinkingly, by applying stereotypes.…”